Dominique Raccah Speaks at LBF's Quantum Conference

3/14/2017

The Quantum Conference was held on Monday, March 13, at The London Book Fair. This year’s conference focused on the consumer by looking at “how different audiences discover, purchase and interact with content.”

Dominique Raccah joined Nigel Newton, founder and CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing, and Jacks Thomas, director of The London Book Fair, for a conversation on the future of publishing and re-defining the role of publisher in that space.

The Bookseller, a book business magazine, ran this write-up of the panel:

Raccah hails publishing's 'golden age of opportunity'

Published March 14, 2017 by Natasha Onwuemezi

Publishers should make the most of the “golden age of opportunity” the industry is currently in, Dominique Raccah, publisher and c.e.o. of Sourcebooks has said, while urging publishers to use this opportunity to redefine their roles.

Speaking at the London Book Fair’s Quantum Conference yesterday (13th March) in conversation with Nigel Newton, c.e.o. and founder of Bloomsbury, and LBF director Jacks Thomas, Raccah advised new publishers to consider their strategy and what they bring to market in an age where books have to compete with film, music and TV for the consumer's time.

“We are watching the collapse of entertainment in terms of formats", she said. "In terms of your time, you now have immediately available to you at all times not only a book, but music, TV, film. [A smartphone] has all the entertainment I could possibly want for the rest of my life. It puts books into the same competitive frame as TV, film, and music. Music is priced at 99 cents a cut, film has a Netflix model. [These models] are changing the dynamics of the monetary exchange between us and our customers. If you want to start a publishing company today, you have to think about what your model can be to allow you to survive as the intermediary between the content creator and the consumer."

She added: "We're now in the golden age of opportunity. There was a time when the publishers had the right to exist because we owned the printing presses. There was an immediate role for publishers; today that role is less immediate, so now you get to define it."

To read the rest of the article, click here.